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Sections Home Search Skip to content Skip to navigationEurope|Obama Warns Russia Not to Intervene in Crimeahttp://nyti.ms/NBvdY0See next articlesSee previous articlesContinue reading the main story Video
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Obama Makes Statement on Ukraine
The president spoke about the "very fluid" situation in Ukraine.
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WASHINGTON As Ukrainian leaders accused Russia of carrying out an armed invasion in the Crimea region, President Obama on Friday warned Russia not to intervene militarily, saying the United States would stand with the world to condemn a violation of Ukraines sovereignty.
There will be costs, Mr. Obama declared in a brief statement from the White House. He said the United States government was deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside Ukraine.
He said any intervention militarily in Ukraine would be deeply destabilizing and would represent a profound interference in the Ukrainian peoples right to determine their own future.
Earlier, at the United Nations, the Ukrainian ambassador, Yuriy A. Sergeyev, said that Russian troops had taken control of two airports in Crimea and that the Russian Navy was blocking the Ukrainian Coast Guard.
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Armed men of uncertain allegiance took up positions at two airports in Simferopol, the regional capital of Crimea, an area with stronger historical ties to Russia than to Ukraines central government in Kiev.
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Armed men patrolled the street outside Simferopols airport in the Crimea region of Ukraine on Friday. Credit Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
Although there were no confrontations or bloodshed by evening, the appearance of a large number of masked men with assault rifles unnerved residents and travelers, who were buffeted by warnings from Kiev of military meddling by Moscow and statements from the deposed Ukrainian president, Viktor F. Yanukovych, that the country had been taken over by fascists and bandits.
In Simferopol, men dressed in camouflage and carrying assault rifles moved into position at the international airport and a second airfield nearby. Their military uniforms bore no insignia, and it was not clear who they were or who was commanding them. They declined to answer questions.
Ukrainian International, Ukraines biggest airline, said on Friday that it had canceled flights into and out of the Crimea region because the airspace had been closed.
Moscow denied that its forces had moved into Crimea and attributed the presence of troops there to internal political processes in Ukraine, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry. It said it had not violated agreements not to intervene in Ukrainian affairs.
Armored personnel carriers with Russian markings appeared on roads Friday outside Simferopol, sometimes alone but at other times in long columns of military vehicles. It was unclear whether the movements signaled a Russian push to occupy the city, a show of strength aimed at cowing far less numerous Ukrainian forces in the region, or simply a routine rotation of Russian hardware.
Russia has many military facilities in Crimea, the most important of which is the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet, in Sevastopol. Its military vehicles regularly move around the peninsula, but Fridays activity was more intense than usual, according to local residents.
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There were no immediate signs of panic in Simferopol, which has a large ethnic Russian population and has generally supported Moscows line that Kiev, 400 miles to the north, has been overrun by fascists who pose a grave threat to the interests of Ukraines Russian speakers.
The only visible military presence in the center of the city consisted of unidentified gunmen who seized the regional Parliament building and a government office complex this week. But Simferopol swirled with rumors, all unconfirmed, that Russian troops had seized Crimeas main television station, the central post office and other strategic locations. Residents also exchanged information, apparently more grounded in reality, about sightings of Russian military transport planes landing at airports.
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This is an open but unannounced aggression by the Russian Federation against the territory of Ukraine, said Refat Chubarov, the leader of Crimeas indigenous population of Tatars, a Muslim Turkic people, and a strong advocate of the regions remaining part of Ukrainian territory. He said Russian military helicopters had flouted Ukrainian sovereignty by flying into Crimea without permission.
In Kiev, the speaker of Parliament, Oleksandr V. Turchynov, who is now the acting president of Ukraine, convened a meeting of the National Security and Defense Council to discuss the situation in Crimea.
Announcing the meeting in Parliament, Mr. Turchynov said, Terrorists with automatic weapons, judged by our special services to be professional soldiers, tried to take control of the airport in Crimea.
Mr. Yanukovych, in a news conference on Friday in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia not far from Crimea, said the region should remain part of Ukraine, despite its historic, linguistic and cultural ties to Russia. I think that everything that has happened in Crimea is a natural reaction to the gangster coup that happened in Kiev, he said.
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CCTV Shows Crimean Parliament Takeover
Footage from security cameras showed the moment armed men seized Simferopols Parliament building in Ukraines Crimea region.
He added, People of Crimea dont want to submit and they will not submit to Bandera thugs, referring to a World War II-era nationalist leader, Stepan Bandera, who was vilified by the Soviet Union.
Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on Friday with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, about the appearance of the armed men at the airports. We raised the issue of the airports, raised the issue of armored vehicles, raised the issue of personnel in various places, Mr. Kerry told reporters in Washington.
Mr. Lavrov asserted that Russia would respect the sovereignty of Ukraine, Mr. Kerry said. But Mr. Kerry said that he had told his Russia counterpart that it is important for everybody to be extremely careful not to inflame the situation.
At the Simferopol airport, the armed men set up positions around a central administrative building, but they did not appear to enter the terminals. There were no roadblocks or checkpoints on the roads leading to the airport or on the grounds of the airport.
After nightfall, Petro Poroshenko, a billionaire member of Parliament, said outside the airport building that he had come to Crimea to negotiate with the regional Parliament on behalf of the national government in Kiev. He said his mission was to do everything not to allow an escalation of violence and to stress to the Crimeans that they were fellow Ukrainians and that Ukraine must not be divided.
He referred to the soldiers standing behind him as foreign and more than once gestured toward them with distaste. What I cannot accept is the presence here of foreign troops, he said. We cannot accept the danger for Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity.
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Striped areas indicate
provinces with significant
Russian-speaking populations.
Meanwhile, another confrontation was underway at a second airport, called Belbek, that is used for military and some civilian flights.
In a post on his Facebook page, the interior minister, Arsen Avakov, said units believed to be affiliated with the Russian military had blocked access to the airport overnight, with some Ukrainian military personnel and border guards inside. Mr. Avakov wrote that the men blocking the airport were also wearing camouflage uniforms with no identifying insignia, but he added, They do not hide their affiliation.
Mr. Avakov said that the airport was not functioning and that there is no armed conflict yet.
At the international airport, Mr. Avakov said, the Ukrainian authorities confronted the armed men and told them, You soldiers have no right to be located here. The uniformed men responded curtly, We do not have instructions to negotiate with you, he said.
Tension is building, Mr. Avakov wrote, adding: I regard what is happening as an armed invasion and occupation in violation of all international treaties and norms. This is a direct provoking of armed bloodshed on the territory of a sovereign state.
Igor K. Tresilaty, who identified himself as assistant to the general director at the international airport, said Friday that the soldiers were remaining in common areas outside the airport, in the restaurant and in parking lots. He said he did not know who they were and expressed no curiosity about them, saying only that they looked professional.
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An unidentified armed man patrolled in front of the airport in Simferopol, Ukraine, on Friday. Credit Ivan Sekretarev/Associated PressContinue reading the main story
Theyre walking around, but we, nor the police, cant have any complaint against them because theyre not violating anything, theyre not touching anyone, Mr. Tresilaty said.
Russias Black Sea Fleet denied that its forces were involved in the deployment at one of the airports. But the national Parliament in Kiev appealed to Russia to stop moves that show signs of undermining national sovereignty in Ukraine, Reuters reported, and it urged the United States and Britain to honor commitments made in the early 1990s to protect the countrys territorial integrity.
Parliament also called on the United Nations Security Council to debate the issue, apparently seeking to broaden the dispute.
The rapid-fire developments came a day after a well-orchestrated power grab by pro-Russian forces played out across Simferopol: Armed militants took control of government buildings; crowds filled the streets, chanting Russia, Russia; and legislators called for a vote to redefine relations with Ukraine. The region is currently autonomous, meaning it has greater local control over its affairs.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea, a tinderbox of ethnic, political and religious divisions, has had repeated outbursts of pro-Russia fervor that all ultimately fizzled. But the events Thursday and Friday, coupled with the fragile state of Ukraines new and barely functioning central government, represented a much more serious challenge to the territorial integrity of the country and an already unsettled geopolitical balance between Russia and the West.
The situation here matches in some ways ones that previously played out in areas like Abkhazia and South Ossetia, where largely pro-Russia populations broke away from Georgia, a former Soviet republic like Ukraine, to effectively become Russian protectorates.
The pace of developments, set largely by well-organized pro-Russia groups that marched through Simferopol in military-style formations, has perhaps outrun even Moscows capacity for geopolitical machinations. Having mobilized its air and ground forces around Ukraine on Wednesday for previously unannounced military exercises in western Russia, Moscow has raised expectations among its most zealous supporters that it will intervene to support their cause.
But any open military intervention would risk plunging Crimea, a vital outpost for the Russian Navy, into bloody chaos and also undermine security inside Russia, particularly in heavily Muslim areas.
Michael D. Shear reported from Washington, and Andrew Higgins from Simferopol, Ukraine. Reporting was contributed by Patrick Reevell from Simferopol; David M. Herszenhorn and Andrew E. Kramer from Kiev, Ukraine; Steven Lee Myers from Rostov-on-Don, Russia; Andrew Roth from Moscow; Alan Cowell from London; Somini Sengupta from the United Nations; and Michael R. Gordon from Washington.
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